1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to the field of skin incising devices. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a skin incising device applicable to the removal of scar tissue.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is well-known in the art of plastic surgery that undesirable scar tissue can be removed for cosmetic purposes or otherwise. In removing the scar tissue, superficial skin incisions are made on each side of the scar, the scar tissue removed and the incised skin sutured such that there is produced a finer, less pronounced, scar and/or a scar which, by optical illusion (created by the particular pattern of the incision made in removing the original scar tissue), is actually camouflaged and barely visible.
The particular incision pattern which has been found by plastic surgeons to be most effective in producing this optical illusion effect is comprised of a continuous geometric design including a plurality of triangular shapes having interspersed therebetween a number of rectangular shapes.
In particular, the technique for scar removal that is generally being employed by plastic surgeons consists of first making a freehand drawing of the incisin pattern onto the patient's skin, employing a sterile marking device, on each side of the scar to be removed. The pattern drawn on one side of the scar must be substantially identical, parallel, and aligned with the pattern drawn on the other side of the scar.
The surgeon then proceeds to freehandedly make a superficial skin incision using an ordinary scalpel along the incision pattern he has just drawn. The incision depth is determined merely by "feel" based on the surgeon's experience.
After the required incisions have been made along both sides of the scar, the scar tissue layer is removed by means of forceps, the incised skin is undermined, usually with curved scissors to allow for easy closing, and then sutured together.
It has been determined that it takes the surgeon approximately one hour for every one inch of scar tissue to perform the above-noted scar removal procedure.
It is readily apparet that the procedure set forth above has many inherent problems and disadvantages.
Firstly, the procedure is very slow and time consuming and consequently, very costly to the patient. More importantly, however, is the fact that it is not exact and is greatly subject to human error. Thus, the initial incision patterns are drawn freehand and do not necessarily accurately reflect the actual design pattern desired. Moreover, as was noted above, two essentially identical patterns are to be drawn on both sides of the scar respectively. Each pattern must align and be parallel with the other. It is readily appreciated that such a requirement is indeed difficult to obtain when the incision patterns are drawn freehandedly.
Additionally, inasmuch as the actual incisions are also performed by hand with a scalpel, they generally do not accurately reflect the incision pattern drawn on the skin nor are they generally exact replicas of one another as they should ideally be.
Furthermore, the depth of the incision made is also not uniform throughout the entire incision. Too deep an incision results in extraneous bleeding which obscures and can even obliterate the working field and the pattern itself. Alternatively, too shallow an incision does not allow for the proper removal of the scar tissue.